Peter Gay (1923–2015) | Central European History | Cambridge Core

Contents:

• PETER GAY (1923–2015)
• PETER J. GAY PAPERS

PETER GAY (1923–2015)

Proceedg by way of reprentative episos and bgraphi of s leadg men— his tellg, mornism was largely a male phenomenon––Gay rang om the Imprsnism of Mo to the Cubism of Pisso to the Abstract Exprsnism of Pollock, om Henry Jam to Jam Joyce, om Arnold Schoenberg to John Cage. Such moments have been tamed by s of study and cultural assiatn, and Gay don’t really brg anythg new to this work of synthis; for all the darg of the figur who tert him, there are no dangero ias lurkg on his pag.

PETER J. GAY PAPERS

”) A rpected social historian whose works clu an acclaimed bgraphy of Frd and a five-volume epic on the Victorian bourgeoisie, Gay acknowledg many shas of opn wh mornism, s sundry ntradictns and paradox, but propos a general theory of the movement: “Mornists of all strip shared two fg attribut...

Lookg at the work of a seri of exemplary figur—Nietzsche, Wil, Blaire, whom Gay lls “mornism’s first hero”—he trac a sharp ward turn and a relentls vtigatn of the self and s relatnship to nature, the past, social nventn, and the weight of tradn. Gay argu that the search for the “ner life and s felico portrayal” lks the artists to other ventur—Mallarmé and Debsy were up to siar thgs—but he don’t let all the foggy self-absorptn bld him to the social and polil ntexts of his story. ”Footnote 3 By mid-1937, Gay's parents had formed a plan to move the fay om Berl to Florida, where an uncle lived wh his Amerin wife, but the events of 1938 ratcheted up the prsure even further.

Footnote 5 In the meantime, Gay explored the entertaments of Havana and worked on his English, polishg his prose at the Havana Bs Amy (to which he received a scholarship) and vourg Amerin perdils like Time, Collier's, and the Saturday Eveng Post. Jt weeks after arrivg Colorado, Gay's fay applied for Amerin cizenship, and, followg the example of a who had immigrated several years earlier, they Amerinized their first, middle, and last nam.

This was ma possible by the terventn of Gay's former high school English teacher, Helen Hunter, who worked out a plan to allow Gay to fish his high school gree by pletg a private urse wh her on William Shakpeare. Lookg back years later, Gay nsired fortuo that he had spent the early years “Middle Ameri, ” a place where was possible to pe the ncerns of the German immigrant muny and bee fully (or at least mostly) “Amerinized.

” Gay moved to New York 1946 to beg graduate study at Columbia Universy the School of Public Law and Government (he turned down an offer om Harvard bee s fancial terms were too meager).

In Gay's study, Bernste is very much the hero, the reformer who sought to ee the ethil re of Marxism om s encstatn Hegelian metaphysics and rencile socialism's visn of equaly wh the polil stutns of parliamentarism and mocracy.

The choice of Bernste reflected Gay's rejectn of both the Stalist left and the McCarthye right; was also a rebuff to those of his lleagu and acquatanc who had migrated om one polil extreme to the other—typilly om the far left to the far right: “I felt fortunate beg immune om what I took to be an often willful polil bldns of two warrg groups who disputed their ground at New York cktail parti and on the Wellfleet beach.

”Footnote 7 Gay remaed fundamentally optimistic regardg Amerin polil stutns, even if his worldview was shaped ccially by tellectuals—many of them also German-Jewish émigrés—whose views of Ameri were hardly naïve or uncril. ”Footnote 8 Marce not only helped persua Gay to take Frd serly, but also to see his view of human nature as fundamentally psimistic, such that s unpleasant featur were unlikely to disappear a postpalist society. Here Gay benefted om the support of Henry Roberts, a specialist Eastern European history, and Richard Hofstadter, a supremely acplished Amerin historian who had bee Gay's clost iend at Columbia.

Although she never earned a doctorate, Ruth Gay would go on to wre a seri of well-received works on Jewish history, cludg The Jews of Germany: A Historil Portra (1992), Unfished People: Eastern European Jews Enunter Ameri (1997), and Safe Among the Germans: Liberated Jews After World War II (2002). ”Footnote 15 In a siar manner, Gay sought to vdite the Enlightenment's attu toward history, argug that s notns of historil atn and culture were far richer than prevly acknowledged, and s nceptns of progrs far more tentative, particularly given the philosoph’ ls-than-rosy timate of human nature. Above all, Gay objected to the notn, promoted by Becker and later by nservative scholars like Jab Talmon, that the Enlightenment had simply replaced Christiany wh a new fah or “secular relign.